Some of the remaining headstones in the Nagel Cemetery, ca. 1925 (NYPL)

Late in November, 1926, I became aware that during the course of some excavations for the 207th Street Yard of the Rapid Transit System of New York City an obliterated burial ground was discovered between 212th Street and 213th Street, near the Harlem River. This district is in the northernmost part of Manhattan and within the present city limits of New York. Upon investigation by the Board of Transportation, it was learned that this site was the former Nagel, or Nagle, Cemetery. Altogether, 417 bodies were disinterred . . . Arrangements had been made by the Board of Transportation to reinter these bodies in the Woodlawn Cemetery. Toward their close I became informed of these operations and, with the permission of the Board of Transportation, was able to measure those skeletons still left unburied, provided my investigations did not interfere with the work of the contractors. Only twenty skeletons were available. The number of measurements was limited by the time allotted. Photographs were impossible, for I had the bad luck of having to work in the rain. (Shapiro 1930)

When the remains from an old cemetery in northern Manhattan were removed in 1926, anthropologist Harry Shapiro had a chance to collect data on some skeletons of colonial New Yorkers so that their physical characteristics could be compared with those of their counterparts in 17th century London (he found they were essentially the same). The cemetery was of interest because it was a family burial ground for the Nagels, Dyckmans, and others who settled in northern Manhattan during the second half of the 17th century, and it was said to have graves dating back to 1664. In an 1806 deed, William Nagel asserted that the burial ground, which was on the Nagel farm, “has been made use for that purpose for ages past for sole us as a burial ground for the benefit of my family connections, relations, and friends.” In his will two years later, William Nagel expressly excepts the plot from his own holdings, and provides that it shall have “free access from the road to the same for interments.”

The cemetery, which in 1926 was bounded by 212th and 213th streets and 9th and 10th avenues, was a plot of about one acre, on the crown of a gently sloping knoll. It was originally about 200 yards west of the Nagel homestead, known as the Century House, and was reached from Broadway by a little lane bordered with apple trees. The southern end of the cemetery, which had extended south of 212th Street, was taken in 1908 when the street was opened and a number of bodies were moved and placed in another section of the cemetery. Earlier Colonial burials were in the eastern section of the burial ground in rows about nine feet apart, running due north and south, and marked only by small, unmarked blocks of local rock, set at head and foot of each grave. The western portion of the ground was filled with graves marked with the names of local families, including the Dyckmans, Vermilyes, Ryers, and Hadleys.

Prior to 1926, a number of bodies were removed from the Nagel burial ground to other cemeteries, most notably members of the Dyckman family that were moved to Oakland Cemetery in Yonkers. When the Nagel cemetery was removed by the NYC Board of Transportation, 417 bodies were transferred to a 1,500 square foot plot at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx and marked with an octagonal granite monument, 9 feet high and 6 feet wide, with the inscription “About this stone rest the remains of 417, among them early settlers and soldiers of the Colonial and National Wars, interred 1664-1908, in Nagel Cemetery, West 212th Street, Manhattan, the site of which was covered by a vast public improvement. Reinterred here, 1926-1927, by the city of New York.” The Nagel cemetery property was incorporated into what is today the MTA’s 207th Street Subway Yards.

The Nagel Cemetery in 1916 (Bromley 1916)Location of graves removed from the Nagel Cemetery in 1926 (Shapiro 1930)Present-day view of the former Nagel Cemetery site (NYCityMap)Monument at the Nagel cemetery reburial site, Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, May 2016 (Mary French)

An 1870 newspaper article describes Memorial Day observances held in Bensonia Cemetery:

Yesterday morning the members of Post Oliver A. Tilden, No. 96 of Morrisania, assembled at 6 o’clock, and marched to Bensonia Cemetery. Following the procession, with a wagon filled with flowers was the colored body servant of Capt. Tilden, who was during all the campaigns of the war in the field. The Post was under the command of Wesley Farrington. On their arrival at the cemetery, the men, numbering about fifty, formed a hollow square about the grave of Capt. Tilden with a solitary woman mourner in the inclosure. Commander Farrington then made a short address to his comrades and those gathered there, when he deposited on the monument a handsome wreath of white flowers. Chaplain Geo. G. Chase then made a short, appropriate prayer, after which he and the rest of the members of the Post each laid their floral gift on the grave. They then proceeded to New-York to take part in the parade and floral decorations at Cypress Hill Cemetery. (New-York Tribune, May 31, 1870)

Bensonia Cemetery was established in 1853 as a community burial ground for the Town of Morrisania, which was then a part of Westchester County. In 1874 Morrisania was annexed by New York City and today comprises a portion of the South Bronx. Bensonia Cemetery was located along St. Ann’s Avenue, extending from Rae Street to Carr Street. Developed by James L. Parshall, one of the original settlers of Morrisania, the cemetery was a picturesque spot, densely shaded by elms, poplars, and evergreens.

It is unknown how many other individuals were interred at Bensonia before it was closed to burials in 1868. About a third of the cemetery was taken in 1870 when St. Ann’s Avenue extended through the site and a large number of disinterments were made at that time. More burials were disturbed in 1893, when German Place was laid out along the west side of the graveyard. By the turn of the century, only about two acres remained of the original Bensonia Cemetery, and the abandoned property, with just a few gravestones still standing, had become a dumping ground for neighborhood refuse. In 1908 Bensonia was taken by the city for public use and the graves were transferred to Woodlawn Cemetery. Public School 38 (now called the South Bronx Educational Complex) was built on the site in 1921.

Bensonia Cemetery in 1867 (Beers 1867)Bensonia Cemetery in 1885 (Robinson 1885)Present-day view of the former Bensonia Cemetery site (NYCityMap)

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The Sisters of Charity Cemetery at the College of Mount Saint Vincent (Mary French)

The Sisters of Charity Cemetery, located on the grounds of the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx, is the final resting place for many women who were pioneers in New York City education, health care, and social services. In 1817, Elizabeth Ann Seton sent three Sisters of Charity from Maryland to New York City to staff an orphanage at Prince and Mott Streets. Beginning at that location, the Sisters established schools throughout the diocese, which was the foundation of the parochial school system of New York.

In 1847, the Sisters of Charity of New York became an independent congregation and created the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent—the first institution to offer higher learning for women in New York. The Academy and Motherhouse, which were originally located near today’s Central Park, moved to their present-day site along the Hudson River in the North Riverdale area of the Bronx in 1859. The Academy was renamed the College of Mount Saint Vincent in 1911.

The small Sisters’ Cemetery lies along a hill just west of the Cardinal Hayes auditorium building on the Mount Saint Vincent campus. Well kept and peaceful, the site contains about 200 gravestones dating from the 1850s to the present. At the top of the hill and overlooking the cemetery is a path with a row of Stations of the Cross plaques mounted in wooden shrines. Most of the gravestones are simple, horizontal slabs; small vertical markers identify some of the Sisters who served as nurses during the Civil War. Larger monuments honor the presidents and mothers general of the order. A five-foot stone cross marks the grave of Mother Elizabeth Boyle, one of the original three Sisters sent from Maryland to New York in 1817 and the first Mother Superior of the New York community.

Other early members of the New York Sisters of Charity community also rest in the cemetery, including Sister Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, who began the The New York Foundling in 1869 as a home for abandoned children. Today, The Foundling is one of New York City’s oldest and largest child welfare agencies, providing foster care, adoptions, and other services for families.

The Sisters of Charity Cemetery at the Academy of Mount Saint Vincent, ca. 1911 (Bromley 1921)The Sisters’ Cemetery at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, 2015Gravesite of Mother Elizabeth Boyle, the first Mother Superior of the Sisters of Charity of New York (Mary French)

Here lies a youth in prime of life By death was snatched away. His soul is blest and gone to rest, Though flesh is gone to clay. He is gone forever his life’s sun is set. But its golden beams linger to comfort us yet. He has gone in the fulness of beauty and youth, An emblem of virtue, a witness for truth. Strangers, remember, you must die.

This poignant epitaph, concluding with a bleak reminder to the living, is from the gravestone of Samuel Cornell, who died in 1841 at the age of 20. His was one of four markers that were found by the Queens Topographical Bureau in 1923 in a plot located at today’s Little Neck Parkway and Nassau Blvd. Along with Samuel Cornell’s monument, the 67’ x 74’ graveyard had tombstones for John Cornell (d. 1847), Atletter Ann Herrick (d. 1849) and Emeline Penny (d. 1850). The site was a known burying ground of the Cornell family, who were among the earliest English settlers in Little Neck. The small cemetery, with the four markers still present, was discovered again in 1952 when a shopping center was built at the site. The remains from the graveyard were likely moved to the cemetery at Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, where other members of the Cornell family are buried.

The Cornell Cemetery near Little Neck Road (today’s Little Neck Parkway), as surveyed in 1923 by Queens Topographical Bureau.Approximate location of the Cornell Cemetery on the estate of John Cornell, 1913 (Hyde 1913)View of the Cornell Cemetery in 1952. (NY Herald Tribune)Present day view of the former Cornell Cemetery site, now the location of a shopping center (NYCityMap)

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The New York Marble Cemetery and New York City Marble Cemetery are the city’s two oldest non-sectarian cemeteries. Perpetually confused with one another since they were created in the early 1830s, these private cemeteries were formed by businessmen seeking to provide alternatives to churchyard and public graveyard interments after burials were prohibited in lower Manhattan by city ordinances in the 1820s. Featuring underground vaults that are the size of small rooms and made of Tuckahoe marble, the two Marble cemeteries were built in the area of Second Avenue between Second and Third streets in the East Village, a neighborhood that developers hoped would soon become a fashionable residential locale.

The two cemeteries were initially popular and members of a number of distinguished families were entombed there; however, by the 1870s rural cemeteries in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx were preferred and the Marble cemeteries primarily were used as storage vaults for bodies awaiting burial at these places. Sporadic entombments continued in the Marble cemeteries until the 1930s; both were designated NYC Landmarks in 1969 and now are open to the public on special occasions.

Location of the Marble cemeteries in 1852. The half-acre NY Marble Cemetery was incorporated in 1830; the slightly larger NYC Marble Cemetery was built one block away in 1832 (Dripps 1952)Aerial view of the Marble cemeteries in 2012 (NYCityMap)

New York Marble Cemetery

View of the New York Marble Cemetery in 1893. Most of the 2,060 interments in the cemetery took place between 1830 and 1870; the last was in 1937 (King 1893)View of the New York Marble Cemetery, 2008 (Mary French)The entrance to the New York Marble Cemetery, in a narrow alley at what was once known as 411⁄2 Second Avenue (Mary French)All burials in the New York Marble Cemetery are in 156 below-ground vaults made of solid white Tuckahoe marble. The names of the original owners are on plaques on the surrounding walls (Mary French)

View of the New York City Marble Cemetery in 1893. Unlike its predecessor, it permitted family monuments and individual markers to identify the underground vaults (King 1893)View of the New York City Marble Cemetery entrance on Second Street, 2008 (Mary French)Vault marker in New York City Marble Cemetery. The site contains 258 vaults (Mary French)View of a vault door looking down from ground level (New York City Marble Cemetery).

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The small yard in front of the Church of St. Raymond, with its handful of gravestones, is a vestige of a much larger burial ground that was the first Catholic cemetery in the Bronx. Located at the corner of Castle Hill Avenue and East Tremont Avenue, the parish was founded in 1842 when an acre of land was obtained by Reverend John Hughes to create a Catholic church and cemetery in what was then the village of Westchester. In 1847 the cemetery was enlarged by the purchase of another acre and this site was in constant use as the parish burial ground until a new, larger St. Raymond’s Cemetery was established about two miles southeast of the church, in 1875. Most of the graves from the churchyard, which extended along the west side of the church as well as to the rear, likely were transferred to St. Raymond’s Cemetery as the parish complex grew throughout the first half of the 20th century.

Location of St. Raymond’s Catholic parish complex at East Tremont Ave and Castle Hill Ave in the Bronx (NYCityMap)St. Raymond’s Catholic Church and burial ground in 1868 (Beers 1868)A view of St. Raymond’s Catholic Church and burial ground in 1905 (NYPL)St. Raymond’s Catholic Church and burial ground in 1913 (Bromley 1913)View of gravestones in St. Raymond’s churchyard, October 2010 (Mary French)

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A landscape dotted with rusted metal markers and wooden crosses, Most Holy Trinity Cemetery in Brooklyn is one of the city’s most unique and visually arresting graveyards. Nestled at the end of Central Avenue in Bushwick and bounded by Evergreen Cemetery and the tracks of the NYC Subway’s L train, the 23-acre cemetery was established in 1851 as a new cemetery for Most Holy Trinity Church, the first German Catholic church in Williamsburg. The parish cemetery was originally located behind the church at Montrose Avenue in East Williamsburg; when a new church building and schools were planned for that site, a four-acre parcel of land was purchased from Evergreen Cemetery to serve as a church cemetery. The remains from the Montrose Avenue site were transferred to the new Most Holy Trinity Cemetery and, as the need for burial space grew over the years to accommodate an estimated 25,000 graves, the church purchased additional parcels from Evergreen until the parish cemetery reached its present size.

When Most Holy Trinity Cemetery was created, the church resolved that no distinctions were permitted to be made between the rich and the poor, and the rule was established that no stone monuments could be erected. Until very recent times, when flat gravestones have been permitted, only simple wooden and metal markers indicated the resting places of the dead. This “democratic equality of the grave” set the graveyard apart from others in the area and the markers created a remarkable visual spectacle. An 1890 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described it:

The monuments that surmount [the graves] present a curious picture and one that has not a parallel in any other cemetery in the neighborhood of these two cities . . . the monuments are now all of wood, or, especially the later ones, of galvanized iron, dressed in imitation of gray granite. Nearly all of them have crosses rising above them, but the peculiar feature of nearly every one of them is that it is decorated with highly gilded figures of the crucifix, the winged head of a cherub and lamb. Some stones contain all of these three figures, some only one. They sparkle everywhere among the thickly strewn white and gray monuments and give the peculiar aspect to the cemetery that distinguishes it decidedly from all others.

Today, few of the numerous wooden crosses that once filled the cemetery are still present and the weatherworn crucifixes have lost their gilding. Large grassy areas, probably once filled with wooden crosses, now have only a few markers scattered here and there. The rusted metal markers, many strangely crumpled and peeling with paint, add to the peculiar atmosphere of this most interesting site.